


Howl

by Spark_Writer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Werewolf John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 02:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2451179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spark_Writer/pseuds/Spark_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There stands John, trapped in the light, changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Howl

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fuck Yeah Teenlock Halloween contest. x

The sky is the colour of drying vomit.

John is on his knees, shaking. Naked as the day he was born. A flock of sparrows swirl overhead, wingtips glistening in the rosy light of dawn. 

"Fuck," he says. "Fuck."

 Sherlock can't look away from him. 

 

\---

 

Of course he'd figured it out.

There were only so many explanations for John's monthly vanishing, his terror at going out when the moon was at its fullest, his squirming discomfort when studying  _Canis Lupus_  in school.

Sherlock had deemed this theory a mortifying flight of fancy.

Until.

 

\---

 

John waits in the garden.

Sherlock bellows at the servants to abandon the kitchen at once, beckoning John inside once they've scurried off. He throws a spare dressing gown in his direction and fills the kettle with water.

They sit.

"So," he begins. His mouth tastes like rust. "You're...?"

"Yes." John is awfully pale. 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why do you think?"

A flicker of ice bursts in his chest. He traces the grain of the tabletop with his thumb. John doesn't trust him.

"It isn't that," John counters, reading his thoughts.

"Then why-"

"I didn't want to worry you."

"Goddamn it," says Sherlock, tipping back on two chair legs before slamming down again and making the silverware rattle. "You're more of a numskull than I realised." 

John blinks twice. His corneas are pink, raw. "We are not mythical," he says quietly. "Lycanthropes are real. England's got at least a hundred alone. Parliament wants it under wraps. Obviously."

Sherlock's heart begins to race. He feels horrible. Dizzy. A tempest of questions scrape the interior of his mind palace. He asks the most important first. "And as for a cure?"

"None to speak of," replies John. He lays his cheek upon his forearms and makes the strangest sound in his throat.

Sherlock flies to his feet as though he's been shot. The kettle shrieks.

 

\---

 

It's his fault.

Cocaine in the dark and a finger on John's number. A plea for help.

Of course John had come. Sweet dangerous John, darting from shadow to shadow. Who'd have known he would take a wrong step?

Sherlock had been on his way out the back door when up went a great howl and there stood John, trapped in the light, changing.

 

\---

 

 

The neighbors have begun to talk. Iron fences pop up around various properties. Doors are locked. Curtains twitched shut. Teenagers who arrive back home past curfew are lectured and grounded indefinitely.

John stops going to school.

Sherlock wishes he wouldn't, but knows better than to argue. 

 

\---

 

 John's father comes home blindingly drunk one night and shoves his son into the November chill. 

"I can't go back," John says, gaspingly, his fingers tight on the cuff of Sherlock's jumper. "Please, I can't."

"I know."

Sherlock guides him up to his room with no lights on and when they bump into Mycroft in the hall, he grits his teeth and whispers something unrepeatable in his brother's general direction. There are no complaints after that.

 

\---

 

"Get under here."

John stares blankly.

Sherlock gestures again to the dark space beneath his bed. "Come on."

"Why?"

"It's the peak of the lunar calendar and you're terribly nervous. So get under here in the dark. You'll feel better."

"What, alone?"

"Don't be daft." Sherlock drops to his knees and wriggles into the roughly seventeen inch gap between the carpet and the underside of the mattress. He looks up. Smiles.

"Oh," says John, laughing a bit. He lowers himself to the floor and shimmies in beside Sherlock, looking at him once he's settled with a horribly fond expression. Stupid stupid stupid. "Stellar idea, as always, Sherlock."

Sherlock cannot look him in the eye.

John passes him a biscuit from the folds of his pocket.  They chew and swallow in silence.

 

\---

 

 

He’s 12 with a busted lip and Mummy's standing above him shaking her head.

“Oh Sherlock, what have you done?"

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” he shouts, and gets to his feet so they are eye to eye.

"Then why have you got blood all over your uniform?"

"Donovan punched John, so I punched her back."

His mother's brows come together in the middle, eyes narrowing. "Well, apparently she did not like that." The ensuing tussle had been quick. Sally's fingernails ripping at his arm. Her fist pounding repeatedly into his chest. The shattered cartilage in his nose. The feeling of pushing her up against brick and kneeing her too-soft stomach. John tugging at him and tugging at him.

Mummy eyes him for a moment, then composes herself. "Let's see if we can find some ice for that, shall we," she says finally. She turns to leave the room, but Sherlock stays where he is, red and sticky. 

That's when he knows.

He's known ever since.

Donovan drills holes in him with her eyes the following day and when he forces himself to look at her, she is smirking.

 

 

\---

 

John's well-formed hands clench the steering wheel of Mycroft's aging land rover. 

"Let's go," says Sherlock, and his heart is tearing itself apart.

John nods and presses his foot to the gas. They jolt forward into violet gloom, speeding past thickets of oak and dogwood. "Here," says Sherlock, after a lot of driving and radio static.

They park on the hill and chase each other down it like children. 

In the broad field, John strips with impunity. Takes off his coat and shirt and trousers and pants. It's almost Christmas. His nipples are pink and peaked, the muscles of his abdomen taught with cold, his swatch of pubic hair ending just below his navel. 

Oh god, oh god, oh god. 

Sherlock coughs and looks up at the sky, at the stars and moon. 

When John drops to his knees, it's not in the way he's wished, but he swallows a groan anyway and falls dizzily to his arse in the frosty grass to watch. John stays curled into a ball for several minutes, then throws his head back, body jerking and trembling, limbs lengthening, skin disappearing beneath a layer of silver fur, eyes going dark and deep, all teeth and jaw and tongue. 

He's a wolf now. A beast.

Sherlock leans back, catching himself on his elbows. 

John howls, and he is already hard.

 

\---

 

 

"You should never have," Mycroft says, close enough to Sherlock's face that spittle flies everywhere. "There are photographs. Video recordings. Do you know what this means?"

Sherlock grabs the edge of the sink and leans over it.

 

\---

 

 

They devise a plan to sneak John across country borders and over to America. He will be given a new identity, a new name. Sherlock hates the idea but this is his fault, again his fault, always his fault, so he stays quiet and folds John's clothes and places them carefully in an orange rucksack. He doesn't try to apologize. They are beyond that. John treats him with rigid normality and he responds similarly. 

He has begun sleeping on the floor.

 

\---

 

The crash is loud enough to wake the entire town, but by then John is struggling in the arms of a man wearing a mask, and the frenetic whir of helicopter blades drown Sherlock's yells as he tears toward John in nothing but his pyjamas. 

"Get back!" Mycroft bellows, making a wild grab for his collar and yanking him back.

"Get off me!" he roars.

John lands on his hands and knees inside one of the helicopters, shouting incomprehensibly-

Sherlock twists around and punches Mycroft in the mouth, ducking as a left incisor goes flying. He starts running again, but the helicopter lifts off and he's thrown backward by the sudden gust of air pressure.

 

 

\---

 

 

He doesn't stop screaming until he coughs and a bit of blood comes up.

 

 

\---

 

 

January is a fucking nightmare. 

"Do something." His hands won't stop shaking.

Mycroft doesn't lift his eyes from the paper. "It's over, Sherlock."

He lets that blade sink in.

 

 

\---

 

There are days and days of guilt and wanting.

Never one or the other. Both. Always both.

He gets achingly high in the dim corner of a pub and drags a young man to the bathroom.

"On your knees."

"You first."

"I kneel for no one," he growls, slurred and numb, and slams the man against the wall, twisting his wrists so he gasps. His craving has extinguished itself; he leaves the dank stall and goes outside where it's black and sharp-cold, punches stone and mortar until he can breathe again.

 

\---

 

 

 

 

> _John. -SH_

 

He deletes it without hitting send.

_\---_

 

Word gets around easily in small villages. John Watson might be in Russia. He might be in Namibia. He might be in Italy.

He is being tested. 

He is being _tested._

Sherlock looks for a cigarette.

 

 

 

\---

 

In June, his mobile vibrates. Unknown number. He opens the text.

 

 

> _01101101 01100101 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110011 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 00111001 00111010 00110011 00110000 00100000 01110000 01101101 00101110 00100000 01100100 01100101 01101100 01100101 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100001 01100111 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110_
> 
>  

Simple binary. Sherlock deciphers the code with ease:

 

 

 

 

> _ Meet me in the clearing this Thursday at 9:30 pm. Delete message after reading. -JW _

 

He stops moving.

 

\---

 

It's tar-black and cloudy but it isn't the full moon, anyway.   John's already there.

It is a stiff, awkward greeting.  John stands beside him, hand resting on his shoulder and Sherlock thinks it might just blaze right through the fabric. 

"How did you?" he asks.

John’s breathing is steady. He squeezes Sherlock's shoulder once, then moves back.  "Walk with me."

 

\---

 

They sit on a boulder by the creek. Their thighs touch and Sherlock struggles to follow the thread of conversation. John shifts. Moves a little closer.   They both pretend the movement never happened. When warm blunt fingertips brush his ulnar process, he has to bite his tongue to keep from making a sound. They pause there for a moment and John keeps talking. He draws his fingers up slowly onto Sherlock's nape and Sherlock cannot help letting his head fall back when John’s palm presses against the curve of his skull. 

He is still looking straight ahead when Sherlock turns to face him. The hand on his neck tightens and a gasp tears free of his throat and they're on each other before they can regret it.

 

\---

 

John has three scars.

Sherlock works the rumpled tissue with his tongue.

It's  marvelous.

 

\---

 

 

He always imagined it the other way around, but this is so much better.

John is breathing and moving and his hips are sharp and there beneath Sherlock's palms. He sighs as he cups the inoffensive handful of flesh, watching it harden to its full size. When he looks up he can't help but smirk; John's pupils are immense and his lips are slack.

"Yes," he says, and takes John into his mouth.

\---

 

He's going to make him howl.  


 

\---

 

Unsurprisingly, Mycroft is incensed. He tugs John into the house by his ear and hurries him into the cellar. "You can't stay here," he hisses, tossing him several moth-eaten blankets and a torch. 

John flicks his eyes Sherlock.

Sherlock grins at the floor.

\---

 

"If he can't move about the house freely, I won't either."

"This is ridiculous."

Sherlock pauses on the second stair and looks back at his brother. "You wouldn't understand."

"Luckily, no."

"You've never been cared for. In that way."

"And you have?"

Sherlock's silence speaks volumes; Mycroft raises his eyebrows in genuine shock.

"Don't bother checking in on us in the night," Sherlock says, effectively dismissing him.

He descends into shadow.

 

\---

 

_ I love him, I love him, _  Sherlock realises and tries to come up with a plan.

In his sleep, John wraps his arms possessively around his waist and holds. 

 

\---

 

It comes to him in the tenderest hours of the morning.  He rolls onto his side, back aching, and prods John into wakefulness.

"Wha-"

"Here's what we are going to do."

 

\---

 

"Ludicrous. You cannot move a stark two hours away and expect to remain hidden."

"London is seething with life; it's one of the world's greatest hubs of criminal activity. It'd be ideal!"

"How comforting," says Mycroft dryly, but his tone belies that they are in fact getting somewhere.

John's hand on the small of Sherlock's back is terribly distracting. He frowns, blushing when his fingers drop lower.

"Have you got a better idea?"

Pursing his lips, Mycroft swivels toward them in his padded desk chair, smears of purple beneath his eyes. He's worried. Not sleeping. Sherlock cocks his head.  "I don't know."

"For God's sakes Mycroft, you work for the Government! I'm sure you can help us sort this out. John is a person, not some monster to be caged and experimented with. He deserves a chance at freedom."

Something loosens in his brother's face. He exhales sharply. "I will... Look into it."

Sherlock lifts his chin, triumphant, and pulls John out of the room.

\---

 

They kiss against the wall. It feels like touching a live wire.

 

\---

 

The file looks harmless enough, beige and blank. Inside are a stack of grainy photographs. John, unclothed and running. John, halfway between man and wolf. John, baring a mouthful of beautiful teeth.

John, wild.

Sherlock fingers them carefully. Takes his time. 

He can feel John watching him from behind, pretending to sip his cold tea. 

After flipping through the collection exactly twice, he returns it to the folder and stands. John watches him. Pale, waiting.

"Fuck the press," Sherlock says lightly and stoops to press his mouth to the stretch of skin beneath John's earlobe. 

 

\---

 

John asks if he's worried about safety. About damaging a future career. About losing his reputation. His identity. His name.

Sherlock is scornful. Shakes the dust from his suitcase. 

"Don't be daft."

 

\---

 

Sometimes people see Sherlock in the village. They hiss at him, whisper vulgar things.

A cluster of teenagers watch from a street corner, enveloped in a haze of smoke. "That's him," notes a girl. "The one who fucked the werewolf."

Sherlock raises his face to the sun and walks on. He wants to take his violin and smash it against the wall. He wants to smoke all night. He wants to scream and never stop. He can do none of it in reality; no one must know John is here again, in this town, under his own roof.

A buzz in his pocket.

 

 

 

>  
> 
> _Come home. I want you. -JW_
> 
>  

Something in his chest releases.

 

\---

 "Alright," sighs Mycroft. "Alright."

Sherlock stands up so quickly he almost falls over and stares at his brother, heart thwacking. "John!" 

The familiar blond head appears in the doorway, messy with cobwebs from the cellar. Sherlock plucks them off, trembling. "Our plan is go."

John inhales and grabs his wrist. "You're serious?"

"Completely."

_"Shit."_

But John is beaming and before anyone can speak further, Sherlock swings them into the corridor and up the stairs.

 

\---

 

He walks into the loo for a piss two days later to find John draped in plastic, fingers charcoal and wet.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Hair dye," John says cheerfully and passes him the electric razor. "We can't be recognisable."

Of course. "Brilliant."

Sherlock joins him in the mirror and flicks the razor on, squaring his shoulders as he sets to work. It takes a weirdly short amount of time to mow his curls into nonexistence. John finishes drying his own and sculpts the now black hair into several alarming spikes. They study at each other, pleased.

"Mother of God," says Mycroft, when they squeeze into his narrow office, freshly shorn and dyed. He looks from John to Sherlock. Crosses his legs. Breathes in, out. "You are _fucking_ mad. And I think it's going to work."

 

 

\---

 

It's all over the news:  **FIND JOHN WATSON**

He stands with Mycroft in the kitchen, watching John unconscious beside the hearth.

"We have to hurry."

 

\---

 

The man is quite obviously an amateur, but that's what you're left with when you need to conduct an illegal escape and only have access to an underground tattooist. 

He hands Sherlock a tissue and blots at his raw flesh.

Nine numbers in navy ink.

Mycroft had insisted. "In case of emergency, the police need to be able to identify you."

"In case of death, you mean," Sherlock had snorted, trying to ignore the grip John had had on his hand.

"Either way."

 

\---

 

"I am afraid," John says that night, "one day you are going to regret choosing me. I'm a freak and you--you're so _bright._ I don't understand."

Sherlock stops chewing his Bolognese. After a minute, he shakes his head. "No, John. I don't mean to be contradictory, but it's... Quite the opposite."

 

\---

 

He spills over John's fist with a shout. 

John moves through it, kissing him, kissing him, everywhere. They take their time coming back to earth.

 

\---

 

 "When you get to London you will live at this address and you will sustain yourselves on the inheritance I send you and you will not make yourselves known to anyone. Clear?"

"Crystal."

"The landlady knows about John's situation. Her husband was a lycanthrope himself."

"Was," repeats John. He frowns.

"Yes." Mycroft looks discomfited. "He was executed three years ago."

Sherlock kicks him hard beneath the table. "When do we leave?" 

"Monday."

He finds John's hand and squeezes it.

 

\---

 

They wake in the dark and stumble over each other in their haste to dress and smuggle their belongings into the sleek automobile waiting outside. Their palms are sweaty; the atmosphere is already thick with humidity.

Mycroft looks pale and puffy, grasping Sherlock's hand in his own before releasing it and standing aside to let them past. 

"Thank you." John's throat works in a swallow. "If not for you-"

"Stop babbling and get in the car. You're this close to meeting the same fate as Mr Hudson," says Mycroft, ushering them out of the house. Sherlock slides into the cavernous vehicle, glancing back at his brother from behind the tinted glass. He lifts his hand. Mycroft doesn't see.

 

\---

 

 

  
John hangs out the window as they speed into the city, howling with a face full of starshine.  Sherlock watches him. He is in love. 

"Welcome to London," he murmurs, as they step from the car and into their new life. 

John covers his hand with his own. "It's good to be home."

 They slide the key into 221 together. 

 


End file.
